On Sat, Oct 05, 2002 at 09:28:32PM -0700, David S. Miller wrote:> Embedded applications tend to have issues which are entirely specific> to that embedded project. As such, those are things that do not> belong in a general purpose OS.

Exactly, every application wants some of the finer details ofkernel operation tuned to their task.

> The common areas, like smaller hashtables or whatever, sure put a> CONFIG_SMALL_KERNEL option in there and start submitting the> one-liners here and there that do it.

Ahhh, but you just defeated the ideal of being able to customizeto task. This is where the hallowed "the user is dumb" theorybites us in the ass. A single option to control all these sizingissues reduces flexibility and that is what the embedded systemdesigner is looking for. The ideal situation is if as we workon all these areas where we can reduce size, we provide finegrained options to tweak them (with a default desktop/server valueand a default "tiny" value). You can have this CONFIG_TINY orwhatever, but then we should also provide the ability to tweakthe values exactly how we want in a specific application. Thetweaking options can be buried under advanced kernel optionswith the appropriate disclaimers about shooting yourself inthe foot.

Regards,-- Matt Porterporter@cox.netThis is Linux Country. On a quiet night, you can hear Windows reboot.-To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" inthe body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.orgMore majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.htmlPlease read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/